White Collars and Black Ties: Interlocking Social Circles of Elite Corporate Offenders

Focusing on business leaders in control of Fortune 500 companies, this study examines corporate interlock among CEOs with security exchange commission (SEC) violations and CEOs without. Using affiliation networks built from publicly available information, we analyzed rates of participation (outdegree centrality), organizational influence (indegree centrality), and brokerage (betweenness centrality). The findings suggest that a single, integrated network exists. However, within these interlocking directorates, subsets of executives exhibit substantial cohesion suggesting the presence of distinct social circles. Only a few organizations and individuals were found to link the subset of offending CEOs to their law-abiding counterparts. Moreover, SEC violators were more socially isolated, thereby increasing the influence of weak ties to active executives playing a controlling role within the network.